Jean Francois Millet eBook

Many years ago the early English poet, Sir Philip
Sidney, wrote a book about an imaginary country called
Arcadia, noted for the sweetness of the air and the
gentle manners of the people. As he described
the beauties of the scenery there, he told of “meadows
enamelled with all sorts of eye-pleasing flowers;
each pasture stored with sheep feeding with sober
security; here a shepherd’s boy piping as though
he should never be old; there a young shepherdess
knitting and withal singing, and it seemed that her
voice comforted her hands to work, and her hands kept
time to her voice-music.”

We could easily fancy that our picture of the Shepherdess
was meant to illustrate a scene in Arcadia. Here
is the meadow “enamelled with eye-pleasing flowers,”
the sheep “feeding with sober security,”
and the young shepherdess herself knitting. Though
she is not singing with her lips, her heart sings
softly as she knits, and her hands keep time to the
dream-music.

Early in the morning she led her flock out to the
fallow pastures which make good grazing ground.
All day long the sheep have nibbled the green herbage
at their own sweet will, always under the watchful
eye of their gentle guardian. Her hands have been
busy all the time. Like patient Griselda in Chaucer’s
poem, who did her spinning while she watched her sheep,
“she would not have been idle till she slept.”
Ever since she learned at her mother’s knee those
early lessons in knitting, she has kept the needles
flying. She can knit perfectly well now while
she follows her flock about. The work almost knits
itself while her eyes and thoughts are engaged in
other occupations.

The little shepherdess has an assistant too, who shares
the responsibilities of her task. He is a small
black dog, “patient and full of importance and
grand in the pride of his instinct."[1] When a sheep
is tempted by an enticing bit of green in the distance
to stray from its companions, the dog quickly bounds
after the runaway and drives it back to the flock.
Only the voice of the shepherdess is needed to send
him hither, thither, and yon on such errands.

Now nightfall comes, and it is time to lead the flock
home to the sheepfold. The sheep are gathered
into a compact mass, the ram in their midst.
The shepherdess leads the way, and the dog remains
at the rear, “walking from side to side with
a lordly air,” to allow no wanderer to escape.

Their way lies across the plain whose level stretch
is unbroken by fences or buildings. In the distance
men may be seen loading a wagon with hay. The
sheep still keep on nibbling as they go, and their
progress is slow. The shepherdess takes time to
stop and rest now and then, propping her staff in
front of her while she picks up a stitch dropped in
her knitting. There is a sense of perfect stillness
in the air, that calm silence of the fields, which
Millet once said was the gayest thing he knew in nature.